When my mother had peremptorily sent Laurence home to the judge, and carried Mary Virginia off to talk the rest of the night through, I went back to his rooms with John Flint, in spite of the lateness of the hour: for I was uneasy about him.

I think my nearness soothed him. For with that boyish diffident gesture of his he reached over presently and held me by the sleeve.

"Parson," he asked, abruptly, "is a man born with a whole soul, or just a sort of shut-up seed of one? Is one given him free, or has he got to earn and pay for one before he gets it, parson? I want to know."

"We all want to know that, John Flint. And the West says Yes, and the East, No."

"I've been reading a bit," said he, slowly and thoughtfully. "I wanted to hear what both sides had to say. Paul is pretty plain, on his side of the fence. But, parson, some chaps that talk as if they knew quite as much as Paul does, say you don't get anything in this universe for nothing; you have to pay for what you get. As near as I can figure it out, you land here with a chance to earn yourself. You can quit or you can go on--it's all up to you. If you're a sport and play the game straight, why, you stand to win yourself a water-tight fire-proof soul. Because, you see, you've earned and paid for it, parson. That sounded like good sense to me. Looked to me as if I was sort of doing it myself. But when I began to go deeper into the thing, why, I got stuck. For I can't deny I'd been doing it more because I had to than because I wanted to. But--which-ever way it is, I'm paying! Oh, yes, I'm paying!"

"Ah, but so is everybody else, my son," said I, sadly. "... each in his own coin. ... But after all isn't oneself worth while, whatever the cost?"

"I don't know," said he. "That's where I'm stuck. Is the whole show a skin game or is it worth while? But, parson, whatever it is, you pay a h.e.l.l of a price when you buy yourself on the instalment plan, believe me!" his voice broke, as if on a suppressed groan. "If I could get it over and done with, pay for my d.a.m.ned little soul in one big gob, I wouldn't mind. But to have to buy what I'm buying, to have to pay what I'm paying--"

"You are ill," said I, deeply concerned. "I was afraid of this."

He laughed, more like a croak.

"Sure I'm sick. I'm sick to the core of me, but you and Westmoreland can't dose me. n.o.body can do anything for me, I have to do it myself or go under. That's part of paying on the instalment plan, too, parson."

"I don't think I exactly understand--"

"No, you wouldn't. _You_ paid in a lump sum, you see. And you got what you got. Whatever it was that got _you_, parson, got the best of the bargain." His voice softened.

"You are talking in parables," said I, severely.

"But I'm not paying in parables, parson. I'm paying in _me_," said he, grimly. And he laughed again, a laugh of sheer stark misery that raised a chill echo in my heart. His hand crept back to my sleeve.

"I--can't always can the squeal," he whispered.

"If only I could help you!" I grieved.

"You do," said he, quickly. "You do, by being you. I hang on to you, parson. And say, look here! Don't you think I'm such a hog I can't find time to be glad other folks are happy even if I'm not. If there's one thing that could make me feel any sort of way good, it's to know those two who were made for each other have found it out. It sort of makes it look as if some things do come right, even if others are rotten wrong. I'm glad till it hurts me. I'd like you to believe that."

"I do believe it. And, my son! if you can find time to be glad of others' happiness, without envy, why, you're bound to come right, because you're sound at the core."

"You reckon I'm worth my price, then, parson?"

"I reckon you're worth your price, whatever it is. I don't worry about you, John Flint."

And somehow, I did not. I left him with Kerry's head on his knee. His hand was humanly warm again, and the voice in which he told me goodnight was bravely steady. He sat erect in his doorway, fronting the night like a soldier on guard. If he were buying his soul on the instalment plan I was sure he would be able to meet the payments, whatever they were, as they fell due.

CHAPTER XIV

THE WISHING CURL

With February the cold that the b.u.t.terfly Man had wished for came with a vengeance. The sky lost its bright blue friendliness and changed into a menacing gray, the gray of stormy water. Overnight the flowers vanished, leaving our gardens stripped and bare, and our birds that had been so gay were now but sorry shivering b.a.l.l.s of ruffled feathers, with no song left in them. When rain came the water froze in the wagon-ruts, and ice-covered puddles made street-corners dangerous.

This intense cold, damp, heavy, penetrating, coming upon the heels of the unseasonably warm weather, seemed to bring to a head all the latent sickness smoldering in the mill-parish, for it suddenly burst forth like a conflagration. If the Civic League had not already done so much to better conditions in the poorer district, we must have had a very serious epidemic, as Dr. Westmoreland bluntly told the Town Council.

As it was, things were pretty bad for awhile, and the inevitable white hea.r.s.e moved up and down, stopping now at this door, now at that. In one narrow street, I remember, it moved in the exact shape of a figure eight within the week. I do not like to recall those days. I buried the children with the seal of Holy Mother Church upon their innocence; I repeated over them "The Lord hath given, the Lord hath taken away"--and knew in my heart that it was man-made want, the greed of money-madness, that had taken them untimely out of their mothers'

laps. And the earth was like iron; it opened unwillingly to receive the babes of the poor.

In and out of stricken mill-houses and shabby shacks, as regularly as Westmoreland and I, whose business and duty lay there, came John Flint. He made no effort to comfort parents, although these seemed to derive a curious consolation from his presence. He did not even come because he wanted to; he came because the children begged to see the b.u.t.terfly Man and one may not refuse a sick child. He had made friends with them, made toys for them; and now he saw dull eyes brighten at his approach and pale faces try to smile; languid and fever-hot hands were held out to him. All the force of the affection of young children, their dazzling faith, the almost unthinkable power upon their plastic minds of those whom they trust, came home to him. He could not, in such an hour, accept lightly, with a careless smile, the fact that children loved him. And once or twice a small hand that clung to him grew cold in his clasp, and under his eyes a child's closed to this world.

Now, something that saw straight, thought like a naked sword-blade, ate like a testing acid into shams and hated evasions and half-truths and subterfuges, had of late been showing more and more behind John Flint's reserve; and I think it might have hardened into a mentality cold and bright and barren, hard and cutting as a diamond, had it not been for the children whom he had to see suffer and die.

There was one child of whom he was particularly fond--a child with the fairest of fair hair, deep and sweet blue eyes, and the quickest, shyest, most fleeting of smiles to lighten flashingly her small pale serious face. She had been one of the first of the mill folks'

children to make friends with the b.u.t.terfly Man. She used to watch for him, and then, holding on to one of his fingers, she liked to trot sedately down the street beside him.

This child's going was sudden and rather painful. Westmoreland did what he could, but there was no stamina in that frail body, so her's had been one of the small hands to fall limp and still out of John Flint's. The doll he had made for her lay in the crook of her arm; it had on a red calico dress, very garish in the gray room, and against the child's whiteness.

Westmoreland stood, big and compa.s.sionate, at the foot of the bed. His ruddy face showed wan and behind his gla.s.ses his gray tired eyes winked and blinked.

"There must be," said the Doctor, as if to himself, "some eternal vast reservoir somewhere, that stores up all this terrible total of unnecessary suffering--the cruel and needless suffering inflicted upon children and animals, in particular. Perhaps it's a spiritual serum used for the saving of the race. Perhaps races higher up than we use it--as _we_ use rabbits and guinea-pigs. No, no, nothing's wasted; there's a forward end to pain, somewhere." He looked down at the child and shook his head doubtfully:

"But when all is said and done," he muttered, "what do such as these get out of it? Nothing--so far as we can see. They're victims, they and the innocent beasts, thrust into a world which tortures and devours them. Why? Why? Why?"

"There is nothing to do but leave that everlasting Why to G.o.d," said I, painfully.

The b.u.t.terfly Man looked up and one saw that cold sword-straight, diamond-hard something in his eyes:

"Parson," said he, grimly, "you're a million miles off the right track--and you know it. Leaving things to G.o.d--things like poor kids dying because they're gouged out of their right to live--is just about as rotten stupid and wrong as it can well be. G.o.d's all right; he does his part of the job. You do yours, and what happens? Why, my b.u.t.terflies answer that! I'm punk on your catechism, and if _this_ is all it can teach I hope I die punk on it; but as near as I can make out, original sin is leaving things like this"--and he looked at his small friend with her doll on her arm--"to G.o.d, instead of tackling the job yourself and straightening it out."

The child's mother, a gaunt creature without a trace of youth left in her, although she could not have been much more than thirty, shambled over to a chair on the other side of the bed. She wore a faded red calico wrapper--a sc.r.a.p of it had made the doll's frock--and a blue-checked ap.r.o.n with holes in it. Her hair was drawn painfully back from her forehead, and there was a wispy fringe of it on the back of her scraggy neck. In her dull eyes glimmered nothing but the innate uneasiness of those who are always in need, and her mouth had drawn itself into the shape of a horseshoe. There is no luck in a horseshoe hung thus on a woman's face. One might fancy she felt no emotion, her whole demeanor was so apathetic; but of a sudden she leaned over and took up one of the thick shining curls; half smiling, she began to wrap it about her finger.

"I useter be right smart proud o' Louisa's hair," she remarked in a drawling, listless voice. "She come by it from them uppidy folks o'

her pa's. I've saw her when she wasn't much more 'n hair an' eyes, times her pa was laid up with the misery in his chest, an' me with nothin' but piecework weeks on end.

"... She was a cu'rus kind o' child, Louisa was. She sort o'

'spicioned things wasn't right, but you think that child ever let a squeal out o' her? Not her! Lemme tell you-all somethin', jest to show what kind o' a heart that child had, suhs."

With a loving and mothering motion she moved the bright curl about and about her hard finger. She spoke half intimately, half garrulously; and from the curl she would lift her faded eyes to the b.u.t.terfly Man's.

"'T was a Sarrerday night, an' I was a-walkin' up an' down, account o'

me bein' awful low in the mind.

"'Ma,' says Louisa, 'I'm reel hungry to-night. You reckon I could have a piece o' bread with b.u.t.ter on it? I wisht I could taste some bread with b.u.t.ter on it,' says she.

"'Darlin',' says I, turrible sad, 'Po' ma c'n give yo' the naked bread an' thanks to G.o.d I got even that to give,' I says. 'But they ain't a sc.r.a.p o' b.u.t.ter in this house, an' no knowin' how to git any. Oh, darlin', ma's so sorry!'

"She looks up with that quick smile o' her'n. Yes, suh, Mr. Flint, she ups and smiles. 'You don't belong to be sorry any, ma,' says she, comfortin'. 'Don't you mind none at all. Why, ma, darlin', _I just love naked bread without no b.u.t.ter on it_!' says she. My G.o.d, Mr.

Flint, I bust out a-cryin' in her face. Seemed like I natch.e.l.ly couldn't stand no mo'!" And smiling vaguely with her poor old down-curved mouth, she went on fingering the curl.

"Will you-all look a' that!" she murmured, with pride. "Even her hair's lovin', an' sort o' holds on like it wants you should touch it.

My Lord o' glory, I'm glad her pa ain't livin' to see this day! He had his share o' misery, po' man, him dyin' o' lung-fever an' all....